original calendar art

Simply stated, Thanks for the Orchid, is the finest Joyce Ballantyne artwork to come on the market. Commissioned by Brown & Bigelow in 1955, the luminous quality of the image and the detail and texture of the brush strokes display the impact of Elvgren’s teachings and collaboration on Ballantyne, if they do not indeed betray the hand of Gil Elvgren. Ballantyne worked closely with Elvgren for the better part of a decade, and it has often been suggested that he ghost painted some of her best work.

Thanks for the Orchid

Artist: Joyce Ballantyne

An original 1962 oil on canvas by Gilette Elvgren commissioned by the Brown & Bigelow Calendar Company and published under the titles “Just Right”,”Hat’s Nice” and “The Eyeds of March”. This sexy pin-up masterwork explores the silk stockings & garters scenario for which the artist is best known. A brunette Elvgren girl admires her wiles in an aptly named vanity mirror in this provocative over the shoulder derriere exposed creation. For those of you not keeping track, recent auctions have seen Elvgren’s pin-up works for Brown & Bigelow topping $200,000.00 on three recent occasions. The high water mark of $262,900.00 was seen at Heritage Auctions June 5th, 2008 sale in Dallas Texas (Lot #66097).

Just Right

Artist: Gil Elvgren

A searingly seductively blonde takes the stand in this hard boiled, pulp fiction inspired 1949 pin-up painting by Al Buell. Working for the Louis F. Dow calendar company under the pseudonym Al Leslie (Leslie was the artist’s middle name), Buell created this leggy, impish bad girl, a scandalous vixen reminiscent of the defiant film noir heroines who graced the screen in this post-war period.

Case Dis-missed

Artist: Al Buell

D’Ancona brings a lighthearted sense of whimsy to this 1950s situational cheesecake pin-up oil on board, which he created for the Goes Lithographic Company, Cincinnati Ohio.

A talented and prolific illustrator, D’Ancona excelled at creating curvaceous imaginings of the Girl Next Door, often presented at her most adorably vulnerable. In this artwork, a pouting brunette reaches for “A Lost Oar” (the title seen on verso of illustration board) only to find herself up the proverbial creek without a paddle.

Up A Creek

Artist: Edward D'Ancona

A luminous and glowing, glamour girl painting by the well-listed, prolific pin-up illustrator and Hollywood portrait artist Edward Runci. This fine oil on canvas features a Haddon Sundblom / Gil Elvgren inspired color palette and painterly technique. A formally posed beauty queen with a little bit of mischief in her eyes, in white gloves and fur wrap with a purple orchid from an admirer.

The Purple Orchid

Artist: Edward Runci

A rare and fabulous surviving commissioned calendar art pin-up painting by Al Buell titled on verso A Perfect Pair. From a series of paintings Buell did for Brown & Bigelow, The Playmate Series. This was for the month of October and dates to the late 1940s. Buell worked with Gil Elvgren in the Sundblom studios in Chicago and his accounts included Coca-Cola. His oils are among the best in the genre, they capture the pretty girl next door (albeit generally under-dressed) and have a wholesomeness rare in the pin-up form.

A Perfect Pair

Artist: Al Buell

A large and radiant calendar girl pin-up pastel by Billy Devorss created for The Thomas D. Murphy Calendar Company of Red Oak Iowa. Devorss had a studio in New York City in the Beaux Arts Building and worked for many Calendar Companies of the day creating large format pastel illustrations of modernist fashionable attired heart-breakers in an inventive art deco manner.

A Bathing Beauty in Yellow

Artist: Billy DeVorss

George Petty’s enormously successful career as an illustrator began in the mid-1920s painting magazine covers and images of beautiful girls for calendars. The creation that made him legendary debuted in the first issue of Esquire magazine in 1933. The “Petty Girl,” with her dreamy curves and witty banter, quickly became a popular symbol of the American male’s feminine ideal.Esquire produced two other calendars by Petty in 1955 and 1956. This painting appeared as the September Petty Girl in the 1956 Esquire calendar. Rendered in watercolor on board, nicely framed and ready to hang.

Petty Girl, September 1956

Artist: George Petty

An original graphite preliminary pin-up sketch by Rolf Armstrong of his favorite pin-up model Jewel Flowers. Nicely framed and matted with an original color snapshot of Jewel as posed by Armstrong in a wide brimmed straw sun hat from this specific setting, (likely taken by Rolf Armstrong himself). From the Jewel Flowers estate, gifted to Mike Wooldridge the co-author of Pin-up Dreams.

Jewel Flowers in a Sun Hat

Artist: Rolf Armstrong

This is a unique and intriguing pair of original illustrations by Rolf Armstrong, created over the July 4th weekend in 1941, at the Brown & Bigelow holiday company retreat at Breezy Point Lodge in Northern Minnesota. Armstrong, and his favorite model, Jewel Flowers, were celebrities at the event, and Armstrong was called upon to create this impromptu view of Jewel in all-American sporting poses, as an instructional event. Jewel sat lakeside modeling, as Rolf depicted her first beneath a tent, then with a dog, then finally, holding a newly caught fish, similar to the prized walleye she caught at Breezy Point that weekend. These two pieces provide a rare look at the process Armstrong used to develop his iconic pin up creations, and come from the estate of Mike Wooldridge the co-author of “Pin-up Dreams” the well regarded and thoughtfully compiled monograph on the artist.

Jewel Flowers at Breezy Point

Artist: Rolf Armstrong

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